What was Central Florida’s “BIG Secret” of 1887-88?
James F. Hobart,
a correspondent for Palatka Daily News, while traveling from Eustis
south to Tavares aboard the afternoon St. Johns & Lake Eustis
train of June 22, 1887, described having to present a “stificate”
to the conductor after departing the Mount Homer depot. Only then said Hobart,
could he enter the “magical city he had read so much about”. We will assume “stificate”
was the Great Lake Region jargon for a “certificate”.
The ‘Big Secret’ was certainly not limited to Tavares or
the northwest corner of Orange County. Pine Castle, 5 miles south of Orlando,
where the first President of Tavares, Orlando & Atlantic Railroad first
homesteaded, offered little about the passing of his father-in-law, Charles G.
Nute.
The silence was indeed deafening throughout Florida’s
Citrus Belt – leaving folks to assume the worst when, at 27 years old, the founder of Ellsworth Junction died in December of 1887.
So, what was Central Florida’s “BIG Secret”? What did the locals prefer not to discuss – despite the fact much of the world already knew?
THE ANSWER:
More than two hundred Florida Citrus Belt towns were
founded during the early 1880s, many being place-names locals recognize today,
but cannot precisely pinpoint on any map.
Palm Springs,
Crown Point, Ellsworth Junction, MacKinnon, and Paolo
were but a few of the up and coming central Florida 1880s towns that suddenly
vanished prior to the dawn of the 20th century. A Great Freeze
during the winter of 1894-95 had been the second coffin spike for
many of these present day ghost towns, but that freeze had followed on the
heels of an earlier, far more serious human tragedy. The freeze killed the citrus,
but the yellow fever epidemic of 1887-88 threatened to kill Florida’s visitors
and homesteaders.
Orange Belt Railway, orange highlight above, crossed Florida Midland Railway, yellow highlight above, in the town of Palm Springs, formerly Hoosier Springs, (purple square), and Altamont (no E), right of purple square. [Exhibit 12 of CitrusLAND: Ghost Towns & Phantom Trains]. Today this is the intersection of SR 434 and Markham Woods road.
Central Florida had been marketed as free of the
fever, malaria, and other such diseases talked of existing in Florida’s
swamplands. Land agents had used such enticing marketing terms as Eden,
America’s Paradise, the Gardens of the Hesperides, to attract northerners – to
convince them to escape the bitter cold and settle instead in a land of health,
wealth, and happiness.
Homesteaders and speculators cordoned off a piece of
their land in the early 1880s to cash in on an expected onslaught of newcomers
- northerners desiring to own a piece of Paradise.
More than dozen railroads began crisscrossing central
Florida almost overnight, and all along the newly laid track towns sprang up. A
Cleveland Department Store owner founded Forest City on the Orange
Belt Railway line (Citrusland: Ghost Towns & Phantom Trains),
naming his new Florida city after his hometown’s nickname. An English family
set aside a square mile for a town in South Orange County, naming their metropolis
on the South Florida Railroad in honor of the family patriarch, Sir
William MacKinnon, a shipping titan and British Baronet (Beyond Gatlin:
A History of South Orange County).
Sir William MacKinnon (Exhibit 43 of Beyond Gatlin: A History of South Orange County)
And two Orlando Attorneys partnered in founding Tavares,
with plans for establishing it as a South Florida railroad hub. (Tavares:
Darling of Orange County, Birthplace of Lake County).
Plat of 1882 Tavares recorded at Orlando, Orange County in 1886
A sand-rutted wilderness January 1, 1880, by
that year’s end two railroads were operating in Orange County – two railroads
that finally made it possible to move about the vast land known today as
central Florida. Within only a few years the two railroads became a dozen – and
by 1887, six railroads were running 20 trains daily into and out of downtown
Tavares. America’s Paradise was flourishing!
Then came a Yellow Fever epidemic. National newspapers
in the north began running stories of yellow fever in the Florida Keys, Tampa,
and Jacksonville. And as Tampa trains passed through Orange County on their way
to Jacksonville, potential land buyers in the north chose not to travel to the
land of wealth, health, and sunshine.
As trains from the north stopped bringing snowbirds, town
lots went unsold. Railroad revenues faltered, and soon thereafter railroads
themselves began to fail.
Not until 1929 did a letter surface explaining that Charles
Goodspeed Nute, father-in-law of Attorney William R. Anno, first President of Tavares,
Orlando & Atlantic Railroad, “died at Orlando on May 25, 1886 of
Yellow Fever”.
Newspaper correspondent James F. Hobart of the Palatka
Daily News was permitted to enter the city of Tavares on June 22, 1887 only
after showing his Palatka Health Department “certificate” to the railroad
conductor. Four days earlier, at Runnymede, near Kissimmee, Helen
(Heig) Warner sat down to write a letter to her mother back home in England.
She started her June 18, 1887 letter by writing: “There is a scare of yellow
fever just now, we are in quarantine.”
Later that year, in December, the 27 year-old founder
of Ellsworth died. A railroad town five miles south of Tavares, “Junction”
had only recently been added after a second railroad laid track into the city.
The young town founder died of undisclosed causes, although the reason would
not have mattered – not during panic-stricken central Florida of 1887.
Central Florida dreams began to crumble, and citizens
likely wondered what could possibly be worse. But as for Tavares, the answer was
a devastating fire – in less than four months.
19th century Central Floridians were
amazing people. And they now live again, as do the remarkable times during which much
of central Florida was founded, on the pages of books by Richard Lee Cronin.
More than a story about the origins of Tavares, this latest central Florida book tells the transformation from a popular 'Great Lake Region' to Lake County, Florida of may, 1887. Click on my book cover to read the book's critique or to buy it at Amazon.
Tavares
Darling
of Orange County, Birthplace of Lake County
Click
on book cover above to visit Amazon page
Or
visit my CroninBooks.com website for details on each of my central Florida books
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